Been trying to locate source(s) of some rattles and a recently developed (last few months - it's not horrible and I'm not crawling around under the car in cold and rainy weather, so no big hurry) rather solid sounding clunk which appears to be coming from the front suspension. These happen mainly over bumps. Knowing that sounds can be difficult to locate, removing the total contents of the glovebox as a starting point helped only a little.
Next was checking under the hood and noticing the radiator would easily rattle fore and aft (not up or down) about 1/4" roughly, I didn't measure it. Temporary fix for troubleshooting purposes was to jam a sponge in front of the overflow bottle and 2 zip ties (not too tightly) around the upper radiator hose neck on the radiator. This suspends the radiator from fore and aft movement. Now the clunk focused on the right front wheel area.
Removing the wheels today and playing "grab and shake" revealed the right front stabilizer bar link had slop in the lower ball and socket. I guess 8 years and 57,000 miles of mostly around town driving with some rather sheetay roads with patches and potholes mainly where the right wheels track ,took its toll. New links (both sides) and nuts ordered. { thanks goes to Digbicks1234 for info he posted in another thread about broken links }. Pry bar showed the lower control arm ball joints still tight and the stabilizer bar bushings looked good and no strut leakage etc.
The reason for this post is to show my methodology , however crude, to zero in on potential noise sources in hopes of maybe helping someone else, BUT MY BIG QUESTION NOW IS : does anyone else have or had a loosely mounted radiator and how did you fix it.
Next was checking under the hood and noticing the radiator would easily rattle fore and aft (not up or down) about 1/4" roughly, I didn't measure it. Temporary fix for troubleshooting purposes was to jam a sponge in front of the overflow bottle and 2 zip ties (not too tightly) around the upper radiator hose neck on the radiator. This suspends the radiator from fore and aft movement. Now the clunk focused on the right front wheel area.
Removing the wheels today and playing "grab and shake" revealed the right front stabilizer bar link had slop in the lower ball and socket. I guess 8 years and 57,000 miles of mostly around town driving with some rather sheetay roads with patches and potholes mainly where the right wheels track ,took its toll. New links (both sides) and nuts ordered. { thanks goes to Digbicks1234 for info he posted in another thread about broken links }. Pry bar showed the lower control arm ball joints still tight and the stabilizer bar bushings looked good and no strut leakage etc.
The reason for this post is to show my methodology , however crude, to zero in on potential noise sources in hopes of maybe helping someone else, BUT MY BIG QUESTION NOW IS : does anyone else have or had a loosely mounted radiator and how did you fix it.
